The T-Rex’s preference for the sweet, clap-ridden flesh of the wicked aside, the fact that carbon dating roundly proves that humans and dinosaurs roamed the Earth millions of years apart. Want more proof? Well, nobody has ever found the bones of a hapless cave man who for all we know, may have pissed God off by coveting his neighbor’s rock collection or something, inside a fossilized Tyrannosaurus.

The folks at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ken., where the wife, some friends and I visited a couple weeks ago would tell you that they probably exist, but God is just waiting for the right time to reveal them.

We went for a laugh, and in a lot of ways got exactly what we expected. There were a lot of modestly dressed Southern Baptist families pouring out of 15 passenger vans. There were dinosaur statues, dioramas of Adam and Eve interacting with a velociraptor and of course, a whole room filled with pictures showing us doing all the things we do these days to secure our place in hell, including, apparently, playing video games.

Then again, there were a lot of things I didn’t expect. For one, there was a noticeable absence of anything to do with Jesus, Moses or any Bible story besides the creation and the great flood. The idea being that they don’t want us to think they’re just a bunch of anti-science nutjobs. It wasn’t long ago, after all, that many of these same folks were telling us that dinosaurs never existed, but instead that fossils were placed in the ground by the devil to test our faith.

So here is a quick list of the “science” we learned at the Creation Museum:

- The Earth is only 5,000 years old.

- The Earth was flat until the great flood, the raging waters of which created the Grand Canyon, mountains, rivers, etc.

- Noah took two of everything on the Ark, including dinosaurs (an animatronic Noah told us so.)

- Dinosaurs are the same thing as dragons (also according to robot Noah.)

- Until Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, all animals were vegetarians and lived happily together.

- After Adam and Eve discovered their love of applesauce, the animals started feasting on each other.

- Tyrannosaurus Rex had a diet that consisted of leafy vegetation and the flesh of sinners (seriously.)

- Cancer and other diseases didn’t exist while Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden.

- Once the Earth dried up and all the animals left the ark, some floated across the oceans on trees that had uprooted during the flood. The “raft theory,” explains how all the wild turkeys and koalas and anacondas from Noah’s large wooden boat could make their way from the top of a mountain in Turkey to Argentina and Australia and Michigan.

Slideshow not working? Click here to see it.

Of course this was all hidden behind a thin veil of “science.” These folks don’t dispute intra-species evolution, it’s the whole humans evolving from monkeys thing that they have a problem with. It blows their mind that something so complex as humans could come from something as simple as a single-cell organism. God put everyone and everything on this planet for a purpose, they argue, after which Adam flopped around the Garden of Eden pointing and shouting “Elephant, nectarine, duck-billed platypus!”

To take it a step further, their theology/pseudo-science jumble includes natural selection and helps them explain away the extinction of the dinosaurs.

I can only imagine that some of them are really bummed out about dinosaurs going extinct. If they were still alive, we could just turn them loose in Afghanistan and win this war once and for all. Hell, while we’re at it, why don’t we just let some eat up all those heathen, atheist, liberal elites up in New York and Boston. I wonder if we could train them to go after just Democrats. Hurry, someone call Steven Speilberg, I’ve got a great idea for a Jurassic Park sequel. I’ll bet we could get Kirk Cameron to star in it.

But I digress.

The fact of the matter is, I think this was all just a silly, ill-conceived way to explain away how many proven scientific theories conflict with stories told in the Bible. Then again, everyone is entitled to their own beliefs (unless you’re Muslim and want to build a religious building in New York.) In that spirit, on the way in to the parking lot, we even set some ground rules so as not to offend. My favorite was a ban on t he word “actually.”

Now, I knew we were on their turf, but when the displays started talking about all the hatred and violence that has come as a result of people’s belief in and teaching of evolution, I must admit that I got a little angry. The worst one was a video that strongly insinuated that World War I was not only started by the Germans, but that it was done because of the German governments decision to teach evolution to its schoolchildren.

In trying to cram their religious ideology into a modern scientific construct, the museum curators displayed a blatant disregard for historical accuracy. World War I was started by evolutionists in Germany and the Scopes-Monkey Trial set off the Great Depression were just two of the lessons they told. It seems the Texas State Board of Education aren’t the only people who don’t want history and science to get in the way of their narrative.

What makes it worse is that the people who gobble this stuff up not only believe it, but are so violently opposed to anything that falls outside of the belief system dictated to them by people like the museum founders that they will fight anyone who disagrees tooth and nail, regardless of the preponderance of evidence that contradicts it all.

In the end, we got out of it what we thought we would, and we had a good time. It was an amusing and frightening place.

One of my roommates that year got mad at me and threw a Nintendo game — Ikari Warriors to be exact — at me.

Scary Gary was pretty well known on campus. He was easily recognizable, wearing a black hunting vest (the kind with all the pockets for ammo and knives and whatnot) over his worn out leather coat, he would run everywhere he went. One time I saw him trip, fall and roll all the way down a hill. It was horrifying, sad and hilarious. Kind of like watching a clown car lose control after slipping on a banana peel and crash into a pie stand.

Gary was a year older than me and the year I lived with him was his second year in that room. He was very attached to that room, so much so that he lived there for at least three more years afterward.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that Gary was, well, unique.

Of course, there was move-in day, when he screamed at me for stealing his bed.

You see, I moved in first and took the bed furthest away from the door and bathroom. Also, it had a brand-new mattress. It seems that was the bed Gary had the year before and he wanted it again. I’d known this guy for all of two minutes and he was already screaming at me.

Then there was the second day in the room, after we’d gotten all unpacked and I had my computer set up. We were all hanging out in the common room with a few girls from down the hall when Gary started looking up the nastiest porn he could find and insisting we look at it. After that night, I password protected the computer.

From then on, Gary would look his porn up on the computers in the lab, printing stacks of pictures out at a time. He’d come home from the library every night with a stack of paper in his hands and walk right by us into his bedroom without saying a word. Gary only owned one belt, one of the old Boy Scout belts with the shiny, metal buckle. It made a tremendous racket whenever he was taking it on or off. So as he marched by us to his room, you’d hear the door slam and then the sound of metal on metal as he unbuckled his belt.

The belt buckle served as an alarm, of sorts. He didn’t spend a whole lot of time with the rest of us out in the common room. If he was home, he’d be in his bedroom watching TV or doing Lord knows what else. On the first night we were there, Gary was in his bedroom and the rest of us were out talking about our classes. Suddenly, his bedroom door flew open and there he stood in a t-shirt and tighty-whities, bouncing excitedly like a small child who can’t wait to tell the latest knock-knock joke. He didn’t even get two words out before we shouted him down, telling him never to come out of that room again without pants on. From then on, the sound of his metal belt buckle was our warning that he was about to emerge.

Typically, it went something like this:

Roommate 1: Did you see the trailer for the new James Bond movie? It looks pretty sweet.

*clink, clank* Bedroom door flies open

Gary: This new James Bond movie is a ripoff of blah blah blah. Besides, they should have put insert obscure actress name here in it instead. She’s much hotter. She’s got naked pictures on the Internet.

Bedroom door slams behind Gary *clink clank*

Just as quickly as he’d emerge to say something, he’d disappear back into his bedroom and you’d hear the belt buckle again. It’s like he couldn’t stand to wear pants for more than a few seconds at a time.

About halfway through the year, Gary developed a crush on our neighbor.

Hillary was on the crew team, the kind of tough, no-nonsense girl that was intimidating to a lot of guys. She was a punk, which is how we met in the first place. She liked to hang out in our room and watch Wrestling with us and after a while, Gary started creeping out of his room (with pants on) whenever she was around. We knew it was on the night Hillary asked if any of us wanted to walk down to the cafeteria with her for an ice cream sundae and all us declined except for Gary.

Of course, Hillary decided that she didn’t want ice cream anymore. Instead, she decided to stay and flirt with Gary. Eventually, the conversation somehow turned to sex and bondage.

Gary: I’m not into that whole whips and chains shit.

Hillary: Bondage can be anything, Gary. Haven’t you ever held someone down during sex? That counts as bondage.

Gary: Nope. My love boat has never left dry dock.

It was honestly one of the funniest things I ever heard the kid say, but sadly, Hillary started dating some other guy and Gary was heading back to the computer lab.

While funny things were rare, Gary said his share of frightening things. As a matter of fact, there was a time at the beginning of the year when we were all kind of scared of him.

It all started when we noticed that he would spend hours drawing assault rifles that he saw in Soldier of Fortune magazine in his sketch book.

He liked to talk about guns and bombs and what he would do if he had them. It was frightening, to be sure, but you have to remember that this was before Virginia Tech, hell, it was even before Columbine. We hadn’t yet seen what people with the rhetoric Gary was spewing were capable of if pushed over the edge.

It was the week before his birthday and he was going on and on about what he hoped to get from his parents. He said he had a rifle for hunting deer at home and was hoping for a high-powered scope to top it off with.

“If I had that scope, I could sit on top of Hill Hall and pick people off coming out of Goddard,” he said.

For those unfamiliar with the EMU campus, Hill is a dorm tower on the back of campus and Goddard was an honors dorm on the front of campus. It also housed the student newspaper.

“Gary, my office is in Goddard,” I said.

“I know,” he replied, grinning.

That night, while he was at work, we ransacked his room.

When we found no guns, knives or anything else to indicate that he was actually motivated to act on his nonsense, we decided we should try to befriend him. Maybe, we thought, if we treated him like we treated each other, he wouldn’t kill us all in his sleep.

It worked, and he started to come out of his shell a little bit. That Thanksgiving he brought his Nintendo back from home for us all to play and even bought a game for each of us from FuncoLand’s Web site. My game, as you might have guessed, was Ikari Warriors. I played it a handful of times and then put it on the shelf after I remembered how freaking hard it was to beat. I guess this hurt Gary’s feelings, because he pegged me right in the forehead with the cartridge.

Gary was still strange, but he was more social second semester.

I felt for the guy, I still kind of do, because he probably has Asberger’s Syndrome but everybody just thought he was weird. That’s why, when he asked me to help with his final project for broadcast media class, I agreed.

Gary was a communications major, which I always found funny because he seemed so incapable of even the most basic, normal human interactions.

Everybody at the newspaper knew him because every semester he’d apply to be a columnist. His application, of course, was denied because his submissions were usually nothing more than rambling, hateful, thousand-word piles of grammar fail. Instead, he’d write letter after letter to the editor. Some got into the paper, most didn’t. I remember one particularly hilariously inappropriate letter where he went on for 1,200 words about why Hillary Clinton wasn’t fit to be a Senator. At the time, I believe, she was just starting to consider running for Moynihan’s seat in New York.

In any case, Gary went on and on spewing his hatred (much of which was regurgitated from Rush Limbaugh, I’m sure) for Hillary Clinton. The point that sealed his argument, he thought, was that no woman could excel as an authority because Captain Kathryn Janeway was an awful commander. Voyager sucked, Babylon 5 was awesome, therefore Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be a Senator.

We had to look up Voyager and Babylon 5 to realize what the hell he was talking about, but once we did, we spent the next 20 minutes laughing.

But I digress.

Gary’s final project for his broadcast class was to do a two-minute, on-camera interview. I don’t know who he’d asked before me, but he told me he’d bombed out with each and every one. Personally, I believe it would have been a far more interesting interview if he was the subject. Creepy? Yes. Frightening? Sure. Fascinating? Absolutely.

Nobody, it seemed, wanted to help him out. He was upset, I could see that he was scared. Without an interview subject, he said, he would fail the class.

So off I went to class with Gary. He wouldn’t tell me what he was going to ask me beforehand, but assured me the questions would be related to my work at the student newspaper.

The first minute of the interview went smooth. Gary asked about what I did at the paper and ultimately, why his columns were never selected to run in the paper.

Then, just as it seemed to be going along swimmingly, Gary seemed to run out of questions. He sputtered, flipped through his note cards a few times, then looked up at me.

“You’ve got some friends in a band?” he asked.

“Yes, I’ve got friends in a few bands,” I replied.

“The band I’m thinking of, it’s called PT’s Revenge. Can you tell me what the name means?” he asked.

“Well, the band is named after a friend of ours, whose nickname is Porno Tim,” I said flatly.

I waited for a follow-up question, but it never came. A huge smile spread across Gary’s face as he scanned the audience, hoping to spot someone who thought me uttering the word “porno” was as funny he did. You could have heard a pin drop in there.

There were no more questions after that, Gary just sat there smiling for what felt like hours. Really, it was more like 15 seconds. There we sat, sweating under the lights, straining like Atlas under the most uncomfortable silence I have ever felt.

Finally, as the professor signaled that Gary had just a few seconds left, Gary jumped up in his seat and looked straight into the camera.

“This has been I can’t remember what he called the segment with Gary T. blah blah blah. Remember, the stairway may go to heaven, but the elevator goes straight to Hell.”

Then, with a grin a game show host would be proud of, he gave a double-thumbs up, holding it until the professor said “and we’re out.”

A few days later we moved out of the dorm and our adventures with Gary were over. I saw him a few times around campus after that. Once, I saw him try to tackle a football player who he’d accused of stealing a burrito from Taco Bell — Gary took his job as a cashier there very seriously.

I know I was — and still can be — kind of jerk sometimes. I know I didn’t always treat people with the respect they deserved. I just hope that, in some small way, Gary wasn’t one of those people.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know he was a crazy bastard, but he’s had a rough go of it and I surely never wanted to make things worse for him. Also, I never wanted to end up on a list like the one Buscemi had at the end of Billy Madison.

I often wonder what happened to him. Did he ever graduate? Did he ever get a job? Did any girl ever let him see her naked, you know, for free?

I’ll probably never know, unless I see him on the news some day.

Ponca City

Now, to be fair, when I say “rural Oklahoma” I mean by the standards of any of us who don’t live in a town whose tallest building is a grain elevator. By Oklahoma standards, however, Ponca City (pop. 25k) is downright cosmopolitan. They’ve got a daily newspaper, a Wal Mart and two Sonic drive-ins.

There’s not much more to be said about the town except that apparently, it used to be kind of a big deal. That, of course, was after they literally stole the railroad from a rival town. Ponca, as they call it here (because saying those extra two syllables is just too too much,) was a major player in the early days of the oil industry in Oklahoma, and corporate headquarters to Conoco for many years.

Because of that, this town is rife with huge homes, many of which are rightfully called mansions. The biggest of all is the Marland Mansion. In all seriousness, it’s more like a freaking castle.

All kidding aside, there are actually a few other attractions in this town worth seeing. There’s the Conoco museum, a moto-cross track and the Pioneer Woman statue and museum. Also, take a few minutes and drive by the Conoco refinery on the edge of town. If you’re going to spend time here, you may as well get a look at what makes the town smell funny.

Oklahoma Pro-tip #1: If you’re in this or any other small town in Oklahoma, the best restaurant is more than likely in a pole barn. In Ponca City, that restaurant is Head Country BBQ. It’s cafeteria-style and you eat off of styrofoam plates, but the ribs are un-freaking-believable.

Hugo: Circus City
When you think of the circus, you probably don’t think of southeastern Oklahoma, but Hugo (pop. 5,500, 6,500 on a Friday night in the fall when the local high school football team is playing) is the winter camp for several of them.

Driving around the east side of town, you can see the trucks, trailers and if you’re really lucky, Lobster Boy or the Bearded Lady. If you have trouble finding it, just drive towards the smell of the paper mill and away from the smell of the stockyards. I guess I could have said drive towards the elephant smell, but honestly, who knows what elephants smell like? Do you? Could you distinguish between them and the stockyards? I thought not.

While driving around, you can also check out the elephant sanctuary on the edge of town. The Endangered Ark Foundation, founded by the Kelly Miller Circus, aims to provide a safe place for circus elephants to retire as well as help to breed the next generation of Asian elephants in the United States.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the town is the cemetery that features a section reserved for the circus folk called, Showman’s Rest. There are many headstones shaped like elephants and circus tents, as well as many engraved with pictures of acrobats and ringleaders. You can view a photo gallery here.

If you’re looking for a place to eat, there’s a pole barn north of town called Fishtail’s that serves five different kinds of fried fish as well as the best fried corn you’ve ever had. Tell them you’re from out of town and they might hang a sign on the wall with your town’s name.

Oh, and while you’re down there, you may as well take a 20 minute drive south to Paris, Texas to see the mini-Eiffel Tower with a cowboy hat on top, because honestly, when are you ever going to be down here again? You may as well take it all in.

Hugo is a lovely town. I lived there for eight months and enjoyed it immensely. Coming from the north, moving to a town that prides itself on being part of “Little Dixie” was quite an adjustment.

There was the mutton busting, which is rodeo for youngsters in which they put children on the back of a sheep and let them try to ride it like a bull. Then there was the day time hooker who lived a few doors down from me. I’ll never forget the time she hauled her air mattress across the parking lot and asked me to blow it up for her with my air compressor. I soaked my entire apartment in bleach after having that thing in there.

Of course, one of my favorite things about that town was the Christmas parade during which Santa would ride down the street on the back of an elephant.

Oklahoma Pro-tip #2: Don’t be surprised when you drink beer all day (as I did with my friends on my first weekend living in Hugo) and don’t get drunk. Nearly half of Oklahoma’s 77 counties — including Hugo’s Choctaw county — are technically dry, not allowing “liquor by the drink” in bars. Instead, the bars, gas stations and grocery stores sell beer that is 3.2 percent alcohol, far less than in most other states. For liquor or real beer, hit the state store early and find a joint that allows BYOB. There are many such places out there in Oklahoma and Texas, including some strip clubs!

Oklahoma City
There are plenty of things to see in Oklahoma City. Definitely make time to see the Oklahoma City Memorial National Monument. Set in the footprint of the Murrah Federal Building, the monument is very beautiful and touching. It’s a wonderful tribute to the tragedy that occurred there in 1995.

The reflecting pool occupies the space where a road once ran and where Tim McVeigh parked his Ryder truck bomb. The field of empty chairs features one chair sculpture for each victim of the bombing. I know it’s kind of a writer’s cop-out to say this, but words can’t do the monument justice, it truly should be seen by everyone.

If you’ve worked up an appetite from all the sightseeing, follow the smell over to Stockyard City. I pulled up a list of local attractions and followed the directions with no idea what I was going to see. Turns out Stockyard City is exactly what it sounds like, a bunch of stockyards.

Alongside the stockyards are all kinds of tack shops, a theater and one of the best steakhouses you’ll ever visit.

The specialty at Cattlemen’s Steakhouse is the Presidential T-bone, the personal choice of President Bush and honestly the most delicious steak I’ve ever eaten. The service was great, the food was amazing. Heck, even the house dressing on the side salad was wonderful. All this, and it wasn’t even in a pole barn!

Oklahoma pro-tip #3: If you’ve had too much soda during lunch and need to stop at a truck stop to relieve yourself on the way back to your hotel, always knock on the door as you enter the restroom. If you don’t, you could end up interrupting a couple having a little afternoon delight. Welcome to Oklahoma! Meth is a hell of a drug.

We went to the Portland Beer Fest, which was pretty great. The highlight, of course, was my brush with Jimi Hendrix

On the way down there, we were almost accosted by Pete the Ginger, who was standing on a street corner trying to talk to people about green jobs. I told him that I was from Detroit and don’t care about green jobs. I just want my manufacturing jobs back. EG told me I was likely to get stoned for saying that in Portland.

On the way back, we were accosted again, this time by a woman from Children International trying to get us to sponsor poor children overseas. Our conversation went on for nearly 30 minutes with her starting out trying to talk to us about dinosaurs holding laser guns and whatnot. It really made no sense, and it went on forever, until she got to her point that by donating $22 a month would allow a kid to be a kid, thinking about things like who would win in a fight, a monkey with a samurai sword or a raptor with a musket instead of worrying where the next meal was going to come from.

It’s a fair point, but the wrong sales pitch to make to a bunch of people who have neither the means nor the willingness to hand money (or as she suggested, credit card information) to a stranger in a dirty, green t-shirt standing on the corner. The look on EG’s face when the girl looked at her and her boyfriend and said “You could have a baby together!” was priceless. When I told her I don’t make these kind of decisions without talking to my wife first, she replied “You could bring a baby home to your wife.” KS loves it when I bring her souvenirs, but I don’t think a child from Bangladesh is what she has in mind.

The rest of the night was entertaining. Good company, good food. The real entertainment came when I got hungry later at night and headed across the street to Jack in the Box. As I pulled into the drive through I saw two women in skimpy bar clothes, obviously drunk, shouting into the microphone. It seems they wanted to order something but the employees wouldn’t serve people on foot. After a few minutes of them shouting at and pounding on the microphone box, they gave up and started heading toward my car.

While one girl stood there staring at me, kind of wobbling in her high heels, the other knocked on my passenger window.

Can we get in your car?

What? No!

The girl stomped off and tried the car behind me while her friend puked in the bushes. Classy, classy ladies.

Have I ever told you this one?

Last summer, I took Kristin to a resort in Pennsylvania for her birthday. The trip was fun, blah blah blah.

Anyway, on Sunday I was scheduled to fly out for work and couldn’t make it back to Detroit in time for my flight, so I caught one out of Pittsburgh, via Chicago, to Seattle.

As is so often the case, horrible summer storms over Chicago delayed our flights for hours, so a bunch of us retired to the bar across from our gate to kill some time.

As I recall, there were four of us, all older business travelers, heading out or going home. We shared a few laughs, a few stories about the road and about our families.

After a few minutes, another group from our plane rolled into the bar. The group, lead by a tall, blond, frat boy-type was heading out on a business trip. For them, time on the road meant an opportunity to party, and a delayed flight wasn’t going to delay the celebration.

These guys were pounding beers and buying shots, it wasn’t long before we were all drunk courtesy of whatever accounting firm or marketing company they worked for.

Of course, because I’m a responsible husband, I was calling the wife throughout the day to keep her updated. Each call, of course, was less coherent than the one before. All the wife could say was “I’ve watched that Airline show, they won’t let you on the plane if you’re drunk! Do your best to act sober.”

I did my best, and getting on the plane would end up not being a problem. Of course, running through O’Hare to catch a connection while drunk was a bad time, but that’s not where I’m going with this story.

While still at the airport bar in Pittsburgh, I started talking to a guy sitting next to me. He told me that he had been in Youngstown visiting family, and that he was glad to be going home to Chicago.

The guys’ subtle hint at an unfavorable opinion of Youngstown was enough for me to start in on my Youngstown rant.

I fucking hate that town. Yes, yes, I know I hate lots of things — Hot Topic, snow and holy fucking shit, Hipsters — but Youngstown takes the cake. That town is the asshole of America — the stinky, festering, infected rectum of these United States.

I went on and on, perhaps I poured it on a little too much and a lot too loudly, but I was like six beers and too many shots of jaggermeister to even remember in.

I told this guy about how everyone who lives there is miserable, how I live in Detroit and I’m even scared of it. I told him how my co-workers and I call it Stabbytown.

It was that declaration that set the lady sitting next to my new friend off. I hadn’t noticed her, but she had been listening all the time.

She was typical of what you might find in a Youngstown bar at closing time. She was rocking the mall bangs, tight jeans revealing a wicked camel toe, Tweety Bird t-shirt, you know the type.

Anyway, she just lost her mind and started screaming at me about how wonderful Youngstown is. I was just an ignorant asshole from Michigan, she said. She went so far as to stand up and get in my face.

At first, I didn’t really know what to do, so I kind of just smirked at her, rolled my eyes and laughed. That didn’t do much to calm her down, she just kept getting angrier and angrier.

Meanwhile, the entire bar had gone silent, everyone just staring at us in disbelief.

After a few more seconds — that felt like endless minutes — of her screaming, she threw some money on the bar, shouted “and if you ever come back, I’ll show you why you call it Stabbytown!” Then she turned and stomped out.

I just turned around to the guy who had been sitting between us and said “I hope she’s not on my plane.”

Everyone just sat in stunned silence until the frat boy who had been buying drinks shouted “Get that man a shot!”

That said, this weekend in an unassuming strip mall in Perrysburg, Ohio, I found the worst bar of all time.

The wife and I went there with some friends on Saturday. Before we got there, they told us it was a little sketchy. Seriously though, we thought how sketchy can a bar in a bedroom community like Perrysburg be? We used to hang out at bars that clearly displayed signs asking members of biker gangs not to wear their colors inside. There’s no way this could be anywhere near that, right?

Well, it wasn’t. As a matter of fact, it looked to me like as haphazardly a thrown-together bar as I could ever imagine.

The first thing I noticed was that the whole bar was probably as big as my freshman year dorm room. It was all of 400 square feet, maybe. The proprietor had painted the walls a deep red and hung a few neon signs up, but that was about it for decor. The floors, in fact, were the same gray, concrete slab that were laid when the building was constructed. There was no tile, carpeting or anything else.

None of that really bothered me, though, I mean I’ve hung out in places that were far smaller. Places so dark that you can’t see the floor — and God help you if you did, because judging by the way your feet stuck as you entered, mopping was a foreign concept.

Anyway, we weren’t even across the threshold yet when a young, seemingly high, young bartender shouted — and I mean shouted — “Hello!”

I wasn’t sure, was she asking us our order, was she carding us, I didn’t know, because she didn’t say anything else. She just stared.

Our friend JMT walked up to her and asked if she had any specials. No, the bartender said, but she recommended that we order two Budweisers and two Michelob Ultras. Really? No thanks. JMT ordered a Budweiser for her husband B and a Bud Lite for herself.

So far, besides a bartender who was either drunk or had been smoking a lot of weed just minutes before (or both), this place didn’t seem so sketchy. As a matter of fact, I was kind of impressed with their beer selection — the one listed on their menu, anyway.

As we were looking at it, the perky bartender walked away and another one approached. This guy had a lazy eye and the kind of perpetual smirk you only see on the faces of the mentally handicapped, clowns and child molesters.

Me: I’ll have a Dead Guy Ale.
Retarded bartender What?
Me:shouting over the crappy acoustic music being blasted over the amps in the corner Rogue…Dead Guy Ale.
RB: Is that on the menu? Show me.

So I pointed to where it lists it on the menu. The guy glanced at it and walked over to the cooler. He dug around for a few minutes, stands up and looked at the bottles of beer on the shelf. First just kind of stood back and scratched his chin with his hand like he’s Isaac fucking Newton postulating on the theory of gravity. After a few seconds of that, he stood on his tippy toes, squinted and put his face right up to the different bottles. I guess he didn’t see it up there, because he turned and walked back over to us with that stupid smile on his face.

RB: Sorry, we don’t have it.
Me: Fine, I’ll have a Boddington’s.
RB: Do we have that?
Me: Ummmm….it’s on the menu. And you’ve got a giant neon Boddington’s sign on the wall.
RB: Show me on the menu.

Again, I point. Again, he walked over to the coolers and went through the whole routine. Again, he walked back with that shit-eating grin on his face and told me he they didn’t have it.

Me: Seriously? For fuck’s sake. Fine. I’ll have a Stella. I know you have it because I see the tap right there.
RB: OK, sorry about that.

So he returned with the beer — which was skunky as hell by the way — and asked the wife what she wanted. She doesn’t drink beer, and after that whole debacle, there was no way she was ordering a mixed drink from this idiot. She asked for a reisling.

Again, he had her point at it on the menu. Again, he walked over to the cooler and dug around. Again, he came back and said they didn’t have it. The wife wasn’t as patient was I was, however, and she just gave up on the idea of having a drink at that bar.

The guy was nice enough (I guess) to give me my beer for free for all the trouble. More likely he didn’t know how to run the cash register. I’m convinced he can’t read. What a fucking joke.

Suffice it to say, we didn’t stay for a second drink.

Most of the time we’d get handwritten letters going on about the weather and spaghetti dinners at the fire hall. It truly was mind-numbing stuff, then one day a letter came across my desk describing a shootout between feuding in-laws on a local ranch. Nobody had been killed, but after doing some digging, I found that one person had been injured and more than 30 rounds had been fired between four people.

Journalists work hard to find stories, but sometimes you’ve got to rely on community members to steer you in the right direction. Sometimes it’s old ladies writing letters, others readers, listeners and viewers (depending on which type of media you are in) uploading videos, writing blogs, making comments and sending tweets.

Citizen journalism can be a useful tool, but it can cross into the realm of irresponsible muckraking quickly, as we’ve seen recently with so-called “citizen journalists” posing as a pimp and a prostitute and going into ACORN offices asking all kinds of ridiculous questions.

Did the people on the video cross the line? Absolutely, but you can’t tell me that those were the only ACORN employees they spoke to. Where are the videos of the ones who sent you away? Where are the videos of the people who called the police on you?

You see, people who act as “citizen journalists” do so most of the time because they’ve got an agenda to push. Rarely is the content submitted by users in any way fair or balanced, as Fox News is so fond of saying. What you get instead is millions of angry voices all shouting about whatever issue it is they think is important.

While members of the media are still trying to figure out just what to do with user-generated content, many in the industry believe it should be kept separate from stories produced by professional journalists.

Alfred Hermida, writing on the blog MediaShift, has a different idea. He believes that professional journalists are working against the public interest by acting as gatekeepers, filtering user-generated content into its own section, all while cherry-picking the best tips from the audience and doing their own stories.

Hermida believes that the best news is that which is unfiltered, coming directly from the source and says that the mainstream stems that flow out of self-interest, accusing journalists of fearing that they’ll become obsolete in the face of user-generated content and “citizen journalists.” To that end, he says that the professional media should start viewing audience members not as contributors but as collaborators.

Call me an elitist, but I don’t think that posting a pictures from her iPhone makes Sally Soccer Mom a journalist any more than singing in the shower makes me a rock star.

That’s not to say that I think there isn’t a very important place for content generated by the audience. Many media outlets have come along way in recent years toward building a community around their product on the Web. Readers debate topics (sometimes very crudely) in the comments section, they submit audio, video and pictures and sometimes even do guest blog entries or send tips using tools like Twitter.

So why shouldn’t content gathered by any old slob with a camera phone and a YouTube account be considered journalism?:

1. Media outlets have a responsibility to act as narrator and moderator to their communities.

If the recent Tea Party protests have taught us anything, it’s that sheer volume — no matter how seemingly schizophrenic and nonsensical — can drown out reason the media doesn’t offer context to the goings on.

How much traction, for example, would the birthers, deathers, truthers and the like have gotten if the media wasn’t there to investigate the issue properly and offer evidence in a reasonable fashion? Do we really want a fourth estate ruled by Orly Taitz?

The media in this country has evolved from the early days of the Republic when the press was highly partisan (although looking at Fox News and MSNBC, you might not know that.) In any case, the job of the media has become to act as a watchdog and when you just have a bunch of people with agendas slinging mud at each other, the truth gets lost in the white noise. Which brings me to my next point…

2. Professional journalists can discern what is and what isn’t really news.

It’s what the old-timers call news judgment and its one of the most important skills a journalist can possess. I used to have a lady call me every time her dog ran away (which was like every freaking week) wanting me to write a story about it. I know that it was very important to her that little fluffy got out again but was it more important than the murder trial going on?

The point is, there has to be someone out there saying which stories should get play and which shouldn’t. If you have a million different people submitting a million different stories, how are you going to wade through all that to find the stuff that’s important to you?

3. Unmoderated user-generated content is an avalanche of lawsuits waiting to happen.

I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve had people try to pass things along as facts to support their argument that turned out to be misunderstandings at best and outright lies at worst. As a journalist, it was my job to double-check up on what people are saying to make sure it’s true.

Had these videos of ACORN employees been taken to a responsible media outlet instead of Fox News, reporters would have done some leg work, contacting appropriate sources to provide some context. It would have been made clear that although what the employees did on tape did was shady, there were others who didn’t break the rules.

I’d like to know what percentage of ACORN employees approached by these conservative activists broke the rules. Was it a majority? Was it a handful? What would have been the proper procedure for dealing with people posing as a pimp and a prostitute? You see, all of these questions would have been answered by a professional journalist interested in the truth. Instead, we got a “citizen journalist” pushing an agenda colluding with a cable network which is all too happy to broadcast something that casts aspersions on the President, liberals, Democrats and poor, black people.

4. It’s not a job that can be done part-time.

During the recent electoral protests in Iran we relied heavily on reports from people on the ground with Twitter and other blogging tools. Ten years ago, we would never have even known what was going on. Citizen journalism is a vastly important tool, but it’s important that we take those reports and run them through the filter of the professional media.

What is the government of Iran saying? What are Iran experts in our government saying? These are not points of view you’re going to get from citizen journalists and they are vital to understanding the entire issue.

5. Without all the facts, any story can be spun, any reader can be manipulated.

Hermida asserts that the truth can be found in the unfiltered submissions of citizen journalists. Well anyone with half a brain knows that the truth always lies somewhere in the middle of opposing sides of an argument. It is the journalists job to find that truth by talking to multiple sources on every side of an issue.

When only one point-of-view is presented, as would inevitably happen with a user-driven media, you’d see an even worse polarization in media consumption than we do today with the rise of Fox News, MSNBC, etc.

Decision makers in the media are still trying to figure out the best way to handle increased interaction with their audience, so I’m sure this argument will continue to evolve over time, especially as technology makes it easier for users to submit information over the Web.

Does the media have a responsibility to the community it covers? Sure. Every story, however, does not demand equal coverage. Professional journalists are trained to decide which issues are more important than others. Should they rely on input from their readers about what they believe deserves coverage? Absolutely, but ultimately the decision should fall on those qualified to make that determination.

Relying too heavily on citizen journalism would only put us on a path where those who scream the loudest gets the most coverage. The media’s role is to rise above the clamor and tell the story. Let’s hope it’s continued to allow to do so.

You sent me another Obama is the anti-Christ e-mail (see the bottom of this post for the full text of the e-mail) today and I’m not sure why.

I know you’re a Republican and that you certainly didn’t vote for Obama, but I also know you’re far too smart to believe what this e-mail says. I’m certain you know that I don’t agree with what’s in it, so I think maybe you sent it to me by accident. If you did send it on purpose, maybe you did because you thought I’d find it funny. For the record, I do.

Maybe, just maybe, you thought I’d read it and change my mind. That I’d suddenly say, “you know what, this strange e-mail that reminds of one of those ‘Bill Gates will give you a million dollars if you forward this to 10 people’ messages from the late-90s is right, I don’t trust President Obama, maybe he is the devil!”

You see, it’s not that I don’t appreciate you thinking of me and the millions of other misguided souls out there who believe we should have health care for all, that we shouldn’t torture and that a nation whose founders, at their very cores believed Democracy can only succeed if we work to maintain a pluralistic, secular government.

I believe in God and I sure as heck don’t think Barack Obama is anything more than a man like me, your husband, your sons and the 42 other men who served as President before him. He’s not a messiah, he’s not going to save us from all that troubles us and he sure as heck isn’t going to bump Jesus out of his seat at the right hand of the Father.

As a matter of fact, I don’t think any reasonable person out there (of whom we’re the overwhelming majority of Obama supporters) would ever equate him to the Messiah. That’s why I’m so confused about its tone, because, and excuse me for being impolite, I think this is fake outrage generated by someone on the religious right meant to whip up some fervor. It seems, because you forwarded this to me and who knows how many others, that it’s working.

I’ve got to admit something. I don’t understand the mindset of people who create things like this. I don’t understand what would possess someone to be so angry that they would spread blatant lies in an attempt to undermine the President and federal government.

And for what? He’s trying to ensure that the most vulnerable in our society have access to health care and yet he has to deal with angry mobs carrying guns to town hall meetings, he has to defend himself against accusations that he’s not a Christian, or heck, not even an American. It seems that people on the right are so afraid of something — I dare not say what — that they will stop at nothing to smear him.

If its merely his ideas you’re afraid of, wouldn’t it be more constructive to fight him with your own ideas? I mean, your Senator, Chuck Grassley, has spent more time denouncing Democratic health care reform telling you to “be frightened for your grandmother,” than to attack the proposed legislation on its merits.

All we seem to get out of the right is fear tactics and e-mails like the one you forwarded to me. I must say, the best parody writers couldn’t do a better job of encapsulating the last year or so of Republican bumbling.

Joe the Plumber makes an appearance, there’s a teleprompter joke and there’s even a birther reference. Funny, yes, because it wraps up every half-baked idea to defeat the President the right has dreamed up, and yet in that colossal pile of FAIL you can see how reason has defeated it. What’s scary is that there is still a percentage of the population who — despite an overwhelming mountain of facts placed right in front of them — people still hold on to these absurd ideas. Facts be damned, Obama is the anti-Christ.

I know you’re not one of those people, though, which is why I’m so puzzled you sent this to me.

Throughout the e-mail, in each section of the poem, the theme that we live in the greatest country in the world and that to change anything about it is tantamount to revolution. To think that anything we do as Americans could possibly be wrong is communist! Wrong is for other countries, that’s why they all try to come here. That’s also why we have to build a huge wall to keep them out.

You see, I agree with you that we live in the greatest country in the world. What I see, however, is a world out there which is increasingly finding a way to do business without us. We haven’t always been the best neighbors, you see.

We’re mired in the worst recession in decades. Heck, unemployment here in Detroit is up to 20% or more. Meanwhile, China’s economy is chugging along, so much so that they and many others are pushing for the American dollar to no longer be the standard for international trade.

We stand to lose trillions if that happens and the only way to walk that back is to get our own economy in order. Like it or not, that means we’re going to have to talk about regulating the financial sector, which caused this disaster in the first place.

See, I don’t think I’m all that dumb, I answer final Jeopardy correct from time-to-time, but I couldn’t hold a candle to the brainiacs in charge of our country. So if I can see the writing on the wall, that something in this country needs to change if we want to remain the greatest country in the world, then these guys must really see a problem and I hope are working to fix it. Provided, of course, if people like you let them.

So I think what I’m saying is that it’s naïve to think we can just keep our heads down and things will keep chugging along forever. Did I tell you that I live in Detroit? I’ve seen first-hand what can happen when you don’t plan for the future.

Of course, the viewpoint expressed in this e-mail suggests that we live in a society that doesn’t need any changes in the first place. Of course believing that would mean that we live in a country where social injustices never exist, where our laws treat everyone equal and where free-thinking individuals have the chance to make decisions regarding their own lives and bodies.

So this e-mail is saying that we live in a society free from discrimination based on gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. By saying we don’t need to make changes, it’s saying that every little boy and little girl in this country grows up with the same opportunities, regardless of where they were born or how much money their parents have.

See, I don’t think that’s true, and I don’t think you do either.

When I moved from your fair city to suburban Detroit during high school, I went from a very affluent school district to one that could be considered to be on the poorer end of the spectrum. I gave up orchestra because we didn’t have one. I gave up my AP classes because they were not offered. I gave up a lot of things because, in a school district that lacks resources, students don’t have the same opportunities.

Now maybe you can explain to me why, in the greatest country in the world, a country that needs not this so-called change our President wants to bring, 90 percent of the kids I would have graduated with in your town went on to college, while only 45% from my class here in Michigan did.

See, in a country that affords all its citizens the same rights and opportunities, regardless of their station in life, you would think that all students would have the same chance to succeed.

There is a legacy of inequality in this country that has less to do with race than it does with the divide between rich and poor. Unfortunately, because the cycle has perpetuated itself for decades, when we were mired in institutional racism, it disproportionately affects minorities.

Poor whites bear the brunt of this too, though, you live in Iowa, look out your back door at some rural farming communities, you’ll see what I mean. To use the formula I see anchors on Fox use to say something without really saying it, “I can’t say for sure that higher poverty levels in a town correlates to lower academic achievement in its schools, but I find it odd that kids who grow up poor fail more often.”

Now I know you can see that, despite living in the greatest country in the world, we’ve got some work to do. Reading this e-mail you sent me, however, it makes me think that whoever wrote it would rather hide their head in the sand than face the change that is staring them in the face. It seems like they just want to close their eyes and hope it all goes away.

I don’t think you’re one of those people. I think you’re smarter than that. I think you’re astute enough to recognize that changes need to be made. Part of what has made our nation great is that we have always, when times are toughest, come together to solve our problems.

It makes me scared, though, when I get e-mails like this and I realize that there really are people out there who believe this nonsense. It frightens me because people like this, who are so terrified of the President are willing to torpedo changes we need to make in this country to stay the greatest nation in the world. It’s as if they are so concerned about beating the President that they don’t care that our nation is slowly dying because nobody can get along.

Millions die each year for lack of health care. Our economy is in shambles because our financial regulators were asleep at the switch. We’ve got a growing superpower in China threatening our influence in the world. And yet wing nuts on the right are letting people like Orly Taitz hijack the conversation and question whether our President is really an American?

I know that you love this country as much as I do. I know you don’t really think the President is the anti-Christ, a Muslim terrorist sympathizer, a Nazi, a Marxist, a Fascist, Socialist or Communist. I know you don’t think he’s an illegal immigrant, Kenyan usurper or that he wants to set up death panels so he can eat your grandmothers brains or Sarah Palin’s baby.

Why then, do reasonable people like you continue to forward things like this around? Why do reasonable people like you continue to listen to ideologues like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck? Why do reasonable, patriotic, Americans like you continue to allow a wedge to be driven between us over nothing?

We’re two friends on different sides of the political fence, yet we love and respect each other. I just wish your side and my side could sit down at the table and talk like reasonable adults. We don’t need to shout, we don’t need to call each other names and we certainly don’t need to waste our time on outrageous accusations.

We’re living in a time of crisis and how we as Americans react will determine whether we come out of this on top or if we slip into the history books as another super power in decline.

We’re waiting. We just wish you’d stop throwing rocks over the fence at us and come over, shake our hands and be willing to talk.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Your friend,

Rusty

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You may chose to read this or you may choose to delete it! I read it and I see truth in it, we need to pray for the USA!!!


WOW!!!

How's this for apocalyptic literature. This was written by a pastor's wife in biblical prose as a commentary of current events. It is brilliant.

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And it came to pass in the Age of Insanity that the people of the land called America , having lost their morals, their initiative, and their will to defend their liberties, chose as their Supreme Leader that person known as "The One."

He emerged from the vapors with a message that had no meaning; but He hypnotized the people telling them, "I am sent to save you."

My lack of experience, my questionable ethics, my monstrous ego, and my association with evil doers are of no consequence. I shall save you with hope and Change.

Go, therefore, and proclaim throughout the land that he who proceeded me is evil, that he has defiled the nation, and that all he has built must be destroyed. And the people rejoiced, for even though they knew not what "The One" would do, he had promised that it was good; and they believed.

And "The One" said " We live in the greatest country in the world. Help me change everything about it!"

And the people said, "Hallelujah! Change is good!"

Then He said, "We are going to tax the rich fat-cats." And the people said "Sock it to them!" "And redistribute their wealth." And the people said, "Show us the money!" And then he said, " redistribution of wealth is good for everybody."

And Joe the plumber asked, " Are you kidding me? You're going to steal my money and give it to the deadbeats??" And "The One" ridiculed and taunted him, and Joe's personal records were hacked and publicized.

One lone reporter asked, "Isn't that Marxist policy?" And she was banished from the kingdom!

Then a citizen asked, "With no foreign relations experience and having zero military experience or knowledge, how will deal with radical terrorists?"

And "The One" said, "Simple. I shall sit with them and talk with them and show them how nice we really are; and they will forget that they ever wanted to kill us all!" And the people said, "Hallelujah!! We are safe at last, and we can beat our weapons into free cars for the people!"

Then "The One" said "I shall give 95% of you lower taxes." And one, lone voice said, "But 40% of us don't pay ANY taxes." So "The One" said, "Then I shall give you some of the taxes the fat-cats pay!"

And the people said, "Hallelujah! Show us the money!"

Then "The One" said, "I shall tax your Capital Gains when you sell your homes!" And the people yawned and the slumping housing market collapsed. And He said.. "I shall mandate employer-funded health care for every worker and raise the minimum wage. And I shall give every person unlimited healthcare and medicine and transportation to the clinics." And the people said, "Give me some of that!"

Then he said, "I shall penalize employers who ship jobs overseas."

And the people said, "Where's my rebate check?"

Then "The One" said, "I shall bankrupt the coal industry and electricity rates will skyrocket!" And the people said, "Coal is dirty, coal is evil, no more coal! But we don't care for that part about higher electric rates." So "The One" said, Not to worry. If your rebate isn't enough to cover your expenses, we shall bail you out.

Just sign up with the ACORN and you troubles are over!"

Then He said, "Illegal immigrants feel scorned and slighted. Let's grant them amnesty, Social Security, free education, free lunches, free medical care, bi-lingual signs and guaranteed housing…" And the people said, "Hallelujah!" and they made him king!

And so it came to pass that employers, facing spiraling costs and ever-higher taxes, raised their prices and laid off workers. Others simply gave up and went out of business and the economy sank like unto a rock dropped from a cliff.

The bank banking industry was destroyed. Manufacturing slowed to a crawl. And more of the people were without a means of support.

Then "The One" said, "I am the "the One"- The Messiah – and I'm here to save you! We shall just print more money so everyone will have enough!" But our foreign trading partners said unto Him. "Wait a minute. Your dollar is not worth a pile of camel dung! You will have to pay more… And "The One" said, "Wait a minute. That is unfair!!" And the world said, "Neither are these other idiotic programs you have embraced. Lo, you have become a Socialist state and a second-rate power. Now you shall play by our rules!"

And the people cried out, "Alas, alas!! What have we done?" But yea verily, it was too late. The people set upon The One and spat upon him and stoned him, and his name was dung. And the once mighty nation was no more; and the once proud people were without sustenance or shelter or hope. And the Change "The One" had given them was as like unto a poison that had destroyed then and like a whirlwind that consumed all that they had built.

And the people beat their chests in despair and cried out in anguish,

"give us back our nation and our pride and our hope!!" But it was too late, and their homeland was no more.

You may think this a fairy tale, but it's not.

It's happening RIGHT NOW

THIS really tells it like it is. After reading it — and before you go into the bathroom to throw-up — forward it to your friends and those you know who care about our country and what is happening to it under the rule of Commissar Obamanation.

I watched a lot of the coverage of your protests in Washington D.C. this weekend and I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading about and it viewing the pictures and frankly, I’m confused about some of your arguments.

You seem like such a cohesive, united grassroots* movement and yet some of the arguments put forth, especially on picket signs during the protests, seem completely contradictory. I’m sure you’re reasonable, logical people, so maybe you could just clarify for me, because I’ve got some questions.

1. My political science and history classes in high school and college taught me that socialism and communism were completely different ideologies. As a matter of fact, after Jews, Hitler reserved most of his hatred for communists. How then, can Barack Obama be both a Nazi and a communist? Also, how can he also be a Marxist and a fascist, two more ideologies that don’t jive with one another or with socialism and communism?

Now, I should offer full disclosure, I was educated in the public schools, including a public university. I have heard Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly talk about how public universities are full of liberals. Could my professors, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s already have been a part of the conspiracy to get Barack Obama elected President? Would that be why they would teach us things that about communism and socialism that were, according to your signs, outright lies?

2. During the George W. Bush administration, any criticism of the President that strayed across the line, questioning his judgment, intelligence, ties to cronies in the oil industry, failures in the business world, challenges to his “facts” on the Iraq war or history of drug and alcohol abuse were met with screams from right-wing talking heads and lawmakers that although we may disagree with his policies, we should respect the man and the office, especially in a time of war.

Personally speaking, I agree wholeheartedly that we should respect the office of the President. For example, George W. Bush claims to be sober and a born-again Christian. I respect both things and think that reminders of him being a cokehead are unfair. I do think, however, that it was reasonable to challenge him when it seems he was fudging the facts in the run-up to the Iraq war.

If it was so important that we respected the office of the President and the man sitting in said office while George W. Bush was there, why is it all right for Joe Wilson to shout at the President from the floor of the House of Representatives?

Why is it all right for you to hold up signs with pictures of him with Hitler mustaches and devil horns? Why is it all right for your leaders in the right-wing media to constantly talk about his admissions of youthful indiscretions with drugs and alcohol?

Is he not every bit as legitimate a President as George W. Bush? Are we not still at war? Why then would you demand we offer respect to one President yet offer nothing but contempt and hatred for another? Which brings me to my next question.

\

3. Speaking of respect, why is it all right for members of your group to show up at rallies with assault rifles? Why is it all right for people at your marches to hold up signs saying “We came unarmed (this time)” or quoting Jefferson about replenishing the Tree of Liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants? Why is it all right to threaten the life of the President?

If you don’t agree with him, there’s an election in 2012. Get out and vote for your guy. Actually, I’ll do you one better. Put someone out there worth voting for you and you might actually win.

I’ve got a hint for you, that person is not Sarah Palin. I can’t believe you haven’t seen through her yet.

4. What is with this birther nonsense? We all know these people are crazy, why haven’t you, as a group, come out and said so? Don’t you understand that we can’t have a legitimate dialogue with you until you disavow loons like this?

I hate to keep going back to examples from the Bush administration, but when the election was finally settled by the Supreme Court, you guys on the right just kept saying that he was elected legitimately and that we should get over it.

Yet now, we have a President who was elected not only by winning the electoral college, but also by gaining the votes of a majority of Americans, and you can’t let it go. He has produced a birth certificate and other overwhelming evidence that proves his citizenship and still a very vocal sect of your group will not accept the facts.

5. Speaking of loons, if you want to claim that none of this uproar has to do with racism, why is nothing said and done about the people who attend your protests with signs making veiled and sometimes outright racist statements?

It makes it nearly impossible to take anything you say or do as a group seriously when such a vocal part of your contingent is calling the President any number of racial epithets. Say what you want about not seeing it or knowing it goes on, it has been documented time after time and yet you pretend that it’s not going on.

Until you confront these people and make it absolutely clear that they do not in any way speak for you, your protests will be taken as nothing more than the terrified flailings of a party and movement in its death throws.

We are at time in this country when the shackles of racism are finally beginning to be thrown off. Yes, a black man has ascended to the highest office in the land. Yet blacks, Asians, Latinos, Arabs and many others in this country face the specter of racism every day at the hands of people like those carrying signs around at your rallies calling the President a monkey or a slave.

There is still a lot of work to do and we have all the momentum. If you continue to allow these people to hijack your agenda, history will show that you all were on the wrong side of the moral argument, no matter how good a Christian you think you are.

6. If your gripe with the Obama administration has to do with fiscal policy, where were you when George W. Bush was driving us into a ridiculous amount of debt after Clinton had somehow managed to balance the budget? Where were the protests during the Reagan administration when the national debt more than quadrupled?

I don’t understand why you throw around “tax & spend” like it’s a dirty word when a Democrat is in office (even when Clinton was balancing the budget) and yet when George W. Bush was spending more than any President before him, you didn’t say a damn thing.

7. You accuse so many of us on this side of the argument of being members of a cult of personality. You say that we believe President Obama is the messiah or some such nonsense and that we should believe in the system, not one person. Yet the number of signs in support of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Joe Wilson were overwhelming. How is that different?

It seems to me that many of us in the middle or on the left have no problem questioning the Obama administration’s policies when we don’t agree with them, yet many in your movement take every word out of the mouths of people like Beck, O’Reilly, Palin, et al as the absolute truth. To question it is to question your morality and intelligence. How is that anything but subscribing to a cult of personality?

7. Why are you so whipped up in a frenzy about Barack Obama appointing czars for various things? Why is the terminology so important to you?

Again, maybe it was my liberal professors lying to me, but I was taught that Nixon was the first president to appointed the first permanent czars to deal with drugs and inflation. Reagan really took it to the next step, appointing several czars to deal with national policy issues. Why was it all right for those two but not all right for President Obama?

Also, can you please instruct your fellow patriots with a little looser grasp of history than you and I that during the Bolshevik revolution (which ushered communism into Russia) the last Czar of Russia and his family were killed. So all those signs alluding to czars being communist are hilariously wrong.

If you’re confused, ask your kids, they’ve probably seen the Disney movie Anastasia, it outlines the whole thing.

Thanks,

Rusty

In the months and years following 9/11, there were many claims that the Bush administration was lying about various things. Some were valid (torture, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) and others that were out-right crazy (the “truther” movement, for one.)

Thousands of so-called “patriots” from the Tea Party movement and other disgruntled protesters descended on Washington D.C.

Many, I’m sure, have legitimate gripes. They don’t like the cap & trade plan, for example. But from the TV coverage (of which I watched A LOT today) and the pictures I saw from the event, it seems to me that there was a huge contingent of ridiculously uninformed, dangerous and out-right hateful people out there.

Today I watched Glenn Beck carry on for 20 minutes about how the government is corrupt. All the while, pictures from the today’s rally on the Mall flashed behind him. There were images of speakers of protestors, some showing people with pictures of Obama dressed as Hitler and signs calling the health care reform bills eugenics.

Now I know what you’re thinking, was Glenn Beck cleverly using these pictures to illustrate some of the corruption he was ranting about?

Of course not.

The images were from a grassroots* rally opposed to said corruption. Curiously, Beck never specifically mentioned what this corruption actually is, but any reasonable viewer could see that he’s simply playing the us vs. them game.

Now this rally, which Beck claimed was in response to all the anger about the corruption in our government, was attended by many Republican lawmakers and comprised almost exclusively of their supporters.

Additionally, the rally featured speakers questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship, calling him a socialist, marxist and communist and saying proposed health care reform would condemn your grandmother to death.

Forget the sex scandals. Forget Jack Abramoff. Forget the weapons of mass destruction. The most heinous corruption within the Republican party is of the intellectual type.

Their claims are so obviously false, so obviously motivated by ignorance and hatred — be that racial, partisan or based merely on the fact that his middle name is Hussein — that they should be disavowed by every right-minded American, regardless of party affiliation. Instead, these loons not only get a free pass, but are embraced and encouraged by those in power.

The only way anything will get done, the only way we will ever have a civilized debate on anything, the only way change will ever be affected in any positive way, is if these lies are met with the truth.

Instead, Republican leaders use them for political gain. They use them to motivate an ignorant, frightened base. They use it to claim that they are fighting for America’s well-being, when what they’re really doing is encouraging fanaticism to further their own interests in power and wealth.

There are always going to be fringe elements at these protests, but in the case of the “Truthers” and the “Bush and Cheney are war criminals” crowds, they hold no credibility even among the protests in which they’re partaking.

In other words, they’re our crazy cousin who sits alone at the family reunion. Nobody talks to them because they’re batshit insane, but goddammit, we share a last name.

What’s frustrating is that the protests going on today seem to embrace and encourage their crazy cousins. If you’d believe the coverage (even that on Fox News and in the Wall Street Journal,) you might think that the reasonable, sane cousins are the ones sitting alone, while the crazy people are off playing horseshoes and having potato sack races.

How long, for example, did it take for Republican lawmakers to stop trying to pass a bogus bill obviously aimed at pandering to the birthers which would force presidential candidates to produce a birth certificate?

Why are right wing talking heads still using scare tactics calling Barack Obama a fascist, communist, Marxist or Nazi? Hateful terms used with absolutely no merit or facts to back them up, intended only to frighten people and force the most visceral of reactions out of people who don’t know any better?

Side note: It is terribly frustrating that these terms are used interchangeably, when they are typically conflicting ideologies. Historically speaking, one can’t be both a Nazi and a Communist. Again, it just proves how well these scare tactics work on the ignorant.

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and their ilk aren’t stupid people. I don’t think they actually believe that Barack Obama is a socialist. I don’t think they actually believe his health care reform plan is eugenics. What I do think is that they know how to paint a twisted, hateful picture that will frighten people who aren’t smart enough to understand the nuances of health care reform or tax policy.

Barack Obama is no more evil than George W. Bush is. Both men have their own idea of what is best for the country and they were both elected to enact those ideas. It is the opposition’s duty to oppose those policies and in a Democracy that works, they meet in the middle to effect change.

So for Glenn Beck to rail against corruption and then perpetuate the kind of intellectual corruption that is dividing our country like never before shows his true motivation.

He doesn’t have your best interests in mind. In fact, with regards to his biggest issue lately, health care reform, things he has said on camera in years past completely contradict his so-called belief that our country has the best health care in the nation. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg with him.

So what do we do?

First, we shouldn’t base our entire perception of the issues on the talking heads. Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann and their colleagues on both sides of the issue don’t know everything. Read real news from real sources and more importantly, understand where your news is coming from and what filter it is being presented through. If you are a Republican, watch MSNBC and read the New York Times, if you’re a Democrat, watch some Fox News and read the Washington Times.

It’s important to understand both sides of the issue, because no matter how sure you are that your view is the correct one, there’s a chance you just don’t have a full understanding of the facts.

Of course I know that this advice is falling on deaf ears. The whole reason political discourse has gotten to this point is because people only want to hear things in black and white.

We’ve got no room for Walter Kronkite any more, he just told us the facts and let us decide. Now, Bill O’Reilly screams talking points at us presented as “facts” and then tells us that if we don’t decide to agree with him we’re pinheads.

It’s frustrating, to be sure. We live in a scary time. All we can hope for is that those we elect aren’t as gullible and ignorant as many of those who are electing them.

* Sponsored by Fox News, FreedomWorks and a handful of other right-wing organizations.